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When I tell people that I am both a Christian and a scientist (but not a Christian Scientist, LoL), I often get puzzled stares in reply. How does one reconcile those two? Aren’t faith and reason mutually exclusive to eachother?

Well, no, not really. There are several philosophies that embrace both faith and reason, two of which are very dear to me: Gnosticism and Deism. Also, when it comes to creation stories, I favor Intelligent Design over strict creationism, simply because certain versions of Intelligent Design acknowledge the validity of Evolutionary theory, both stellar and biological. Finally, I also believe in reincarnation, an Eastern mystical idea I think was woefully omitted from mainstream Christianity, in which I have very little faith, due to the fact that the canonical Bible is moreso the revisionist product of oppressive ancient political regimes than any inherently valid history, philosophy, or morality.

While meeting with a Deist discussion group, the question was posed: “Since Deists are often considered atheists by traditional religions, have you as a Deist ever been forced to endure any abuse from traditional theists?” After a few minutes thought, my response to this was: “Actually, as a Deist, I have taken far more abuse from self-righteous, know-it-all Atheists than any variety of Theist.”

What most atheists refuse to recognize is that Atheism is in itself a leap of faith. One cannot prove that there is no God any more than one can prove, conclusively, that there is a God. It is logically impossible to prove a negative. Think of it this way: If I were to tell you that the apples from my tree were the best-tasting apples in the world, how would you go about invalidating this claim? You would have to taste apples from every single tree in the world, compare them to mine and find one superior, a task which would probably be impossible within a single human lifespan, to say nothing of devising a system for rating the taste of apples objectively.

And the same thing applies to proving or disproving the existence of God. The universe is vast. Humans have been studying it for hundreds of thousands of years, and still haven’t completely figured it out. We thought we had a pretty good handle on it when Newton enumerated his laws of physics, but then Einstein figured out that those only work on Earth, and there are objects in deep space like pulsars, quasars, and black holes that violate Newtonian physics, which is why the Special Theory of Relativity and General theory of Relativity had to be created. Einstein was never able to create a unified field theory to unite the micro with the macro that fit with observable data. But suffice to say, science is a work in progress that is taking thousands of years, and may never be complete.

And many Atheists will attack the straw man of this idea of a benevolent God. If God exists, why is there so much suffering in the world? Well, just because God isn’t what you want it to be, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Maybe God transcends or is beyond human morality. Maybe God doesn’t give a damn about Planet Earth or the human race. Maybe God is a psychopath. But in any case, saying that there is no God just because it doesn’t work for you personally above all others is akin to a spoiled brat saying he has no parents just because they won’t buy him a Ferrari.

Thus, the only really logically defensible position is agnosticism, which is a simple admission that one doesn’t know whether God exists or not. But I like to think of my ontological viewpoint as consisting of both knowledge AND belief. There are things that I know and can prove through repeatable demonstration, and there are things I merely believe through circumstantial evidence and intuition. And finally, there are my hopes, dreams, and wishes to which I cling.

There is also Chaos Theory and the Anthropic Principle to consider, in addition to Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Perhaps the universe merely appears ordered because we are viewing it through a human lens, or perhaps this pocket of order in which we find ourselves is not truly reflective of the ultimately chaotic universe in which we live. There are many Black Swans that could potentially pop up to challenge our currently accepted ontological models. Think of it this way: In a truly random sequence of numbers, the subsequence “12345” is bound to occur by random chance. But this doesn’t mean that the entire sequence is ordered, even if we could only perceive the part that is. Chaos, by definition, can contain random pockets of finite order, but order cannot contain any chaos whatsoever. Thus, chaos is ideologically superior to order.

Many atheists will cling to Occam’s Razor in order to rationalize oversimplifying complex ontological problems. But aren’t things actually getting more and more complicated the more knowledge of the microcosm and macrocosm we uncover? How often do you crack open a sophisticated, newly-engineered piece of technology and find a simple mechanism driving it? So maybe the simplest explanation isn’t always correct. Maybe that’s just a way that people with access to privileged information try to convince those denied the facts to stop asking questions.

What I have found is that many atheists, via their amoral and insensitive behavior, often become so invested in there not being a God, Karma, or Cosmic Justice, that they refuse to acknowledge any evidence to the contrary, in what becomes a kind of reverse Pascal’s Wager. On the other hand, some Christians treat the crucifixion as a blank check to do whatever they want, as if Jesus Christ died 2000 years ago so that they can be assholes today. The point I guess is that both Atheists and religious fundamentalists rely upon dogma, often because it enables their selfish behavior.

Atheists also like to point at atrocities committed by organized religion as a way to discredit it. This inevitably includes mention of The Salem Witch Trials, The Crusades, and the Inquisition. But these attacks only apply to organized religion, not necessarily personal faith. Besides, atheists have the egregious human rights violations of Stalin’s, Mao’s, and Pol Pot’s authoritarian communist atheism to answer for, as well as the tyranny of post-agricultural society, and scientific abominations like nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare.

But this paper isn’t meant to be a criticism of Atheism, or religious fundamentalism, both of which which I feel dig their own hole and thus need no further chastization, but rather, it is a defense of faith from those who would say that all faith is unreasonable. It is my position that one can be both faithful and reasonable at the same time, as long as one has the proper framework of knowledge and belief. So bear with me, because this is going to take some biographical storytelling to explain, as many of my ideas do.

I’m not much into ministry, because I think that convincing others of your beliefs is just another way of rationalizing them. Instead, I try to celebrate diversity and acknowledge that everyone is one their own unique spiritual path. I don’t pretend to be on the ultimate path, and I think that all paths eventually lead to the same positive place even if some take more detours than others. But I do urge others to be prosocial in their morality, no matter what faith or lack thereof they may choose.

I haven’t always believed in things like God, the soul, karma, reincarnation, the afterlife, or cosmic justice. In fact, hardship and injustice were what caused the dark, faithless times in my life. And yet still, I rejected Nihilism, the Will to Power, and other philosophies that would enable my depravity and tyranny. Instead, I searched for meaning, and slowly, the pieces of the puzzle came together. Most of those pieces were books, and a few of them were people.

The first book to ever fill my heart with spiritual inspiration and joy was the Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tzu. This book was not given to me purposefully. My father, the Machiavellian executive, in a classic Lex and Lionel Luthor moment, gave me the Art of War by Sun Tzu at the age of 13, thinking that it would help me succeed in the world. But I found the book to be quite boring, and, returning it to its boxed set, there I found Lao Tzu’s tome. I was enthralled by it, and have been reading and recommending it ever since. In fact, I have purchased and given away more copies of this book as a form of ministry than any other book written by a human being, as it is one of my favorites.

But the Tao never fully satisfied my visceral desires. It was a book about how to be a monk, and win by losing. The book seemed to only satisfy my right brain, leaving my left, more analytical mind wanting. And in a materialistic society such as America, I found my Eastern values constantly being disrespected, and myself constantly offended by such a two-dimensional system.

That was when I started studying Kabbalah, numerology, gematria, astrology, and Jewish mysticism, and specifically the work of Aleister Crowley. The thing I loved most about Crowley’s philosophy was the emphasis on the existence of the Soul, aka the Higher Self, whose higher conscious will was supposed to be exhalted over the baser urges of the body such as hunger, chemical dependence, emotions, material greed, and the sex drive. Here we see one of my first exposures to Cartesian dualism: the idea that there is a material will and a spiritual will, and that one should be held in higher regard than the other. Also the idea that the material world simply isn’t real, or is the projection of a false God.

It was through my study of the Tree of Life that I became exposed to the work of a man named Drunvalo Melchizedek, and the concept of Sacred Geometry. Drunvalo is a very great man, and I credit him with bringing me into the light, by giving my left brain the proof it needed that God exists. His work was all about the patterns and structures in nature: The Phi Ratio, the Golden Mean Rectangle, Metatron’s Cube, and the Flower of life. These things all related to the patterns in nature, molecular structure, cellular structure, plant growth, even galaxy formation that seemed to suggest that there was an underlying order to the universe, and that this order did not render itself by random chance. The watchmaker’s argument began to ring truer as new information came to light.

But it wasn’t just the science Drunvalo presented that contributed to my personal philosophy: it was the history as well. For Drunvalo told a story about the Fall of Man, which I considered crucial to my own theology. It was he who introduced me to the concepts of Luciferian Dualism and Unity Consciousness. Because Earth has fallen from God and Unity Consciousness, it has become a Luciferian planet, where all living beings are in competition with eachother, rather than synergizing through cooperation. The idea that “I” am separate from everything and everyone else, rather than “I” simply being a unique facet of the same jewel that embodies all of creation, is the Devil’s delusion, forced upon us all by the illusion of materialism, finity, and mortality.

At the same time that I was maintaining a private study of spirituality and theology, strictly to satisfy my own thirst for knowledge regarding the subject, I was also enrolled in a very research-oriented scholastic institution, dissecting brains and learning experimental design and statistical analysis. Taking apart a brain and mapping its neural network, and knowing that the entirety of a human being’s thoughts, opinions, and beliefs were contained within, could easily drive one to some very depressingly deterministic conclusions.

But instead, I simply recognized that the brain was merely a tool of the soul. It is a material thing just like any other, the avatar of our soul in the material world, but I refused to believe that a person’s brain and body are the entirety of their being. Instead, I see them as vessels. Very complicated and beautifully articulated vessels (especially when we are referring to beautiful women, whom I relate to the engineered perfection of European sportscars), but mere vessels nonetheless. The true essence of one’s being was the soul, and what is a soul but a facet of the Divine? So, even though I respected the scientific method as it applied to materialist systems such as physics, chemistry, and biology, I thought of these systems as secondary in importance to the spiritual realm, which I consider the driving force behind consciousness, and life itself.

Basically, I believe in a force superior to the brain, and layers of existence on top of the mere physical. A whole system of mental, emotional, and spiritual planes. And maybe even a bad plane beneath the material, that some people get sucked into when they die, like: “Aggghhhh, oh no! I shouldn’t have been such a douchebag!” The universe needs a toilet, I think. I like to believe that some sinners can be redeemed through some sort of spiritual salvation, but let’s face it: some people are just going to Hell. I used to think Hell was a dumb idea until I became awake to the way some people treat eachother. Now I’m all for it. Maybe not forever, but I do think some souls could benefit from punishment.

I also began learning how to think rationally through internet discussion. Merely proffering an idea did not make it valid; that idea had to stand up to the relentless analysis of some very ruthless minds on the internet, and I had some of my ideological children horribly maimed by the logic of others in this way, until I learned to think more objectively and not be too attached to my ideas. The internet, I think, can be a crucible for ideas, which is good, because it won’t allow bullshit to fly for too long, at least not completely uncontested by contrarian thinkers.

It was at this point in my studies that events in my personal life brought me to become a Christian. Romantic failure, legal persecution, and financial misappropriation had made my life a living Hell, and this caused me to, for the first time ever, empathize with Jesus Christ as he was crucified. And I realized that those who suffer for the benefit of others carry a certain divinity to their grave. As much as I wanted to take revenge upon those who had slighted me in one way or another, I realized both the futility in doing so, and the far greater reward of living and letting die.

But my personal Christian theology was a very Gnostic one, both because I rejected the canonical gospel, and because I valued the use of entheogenic substances in my spiritual journey. Marijuana, psilocybin, LSD, MDMA… these were all cognitive tools that I used to explore myself, the material world, and the Astral Plane. In other words, I knew God through experience.

Also, if Satan and God were at war, and the Fall of Man was a consequence of that war, then Jesus was the reconciliation of God and Satan, the Alpha and the Omega. The Spiritual and Material. The left and the right. The light and the darkness. Through the salvation of Christ, God’s son, man was allowed to ascend from Hell and be healed by the light.

I also have great respect for the Hindu system of reincarnation, which I believe is something that most enlightened beings subscribe to as well. Through past life regression and conversation with my Higher Self, I began to uncover the agenda of my soul, which has always been that of liberator. In every life I have lived on Earth, I have fought for freedom. I have died on many battlefields and come back stronger every time. Some of my battles were political, some social, some economic, some material, and some spiritual. But it was always my faith that made it so easy to sacrifice myself to a cause, the knowledge that nothing material would ever truly hurt me more than selling out my values and acquiring bad karma would. In other words: to compromise one’s values is seen as carrying far greater spiritual consequences than the mere material consequences of taking a stand: imprisonment, injury, death, etc…

Conversely, there are those who have lived many lives dedicated to oppression. I believe these types of people are those who are so stuck in the moment that they are blind to the bigger picture. Maybe they buy too much into the illusion of the material. So, I believe that human history is the story of souls reincarnating themselves over and over on this planet to fight the same battles in a neverending progression towards paradise and enlightenment, with some people being more effective to this end than others.

But of course, there are far better places to be incarnate, and far more powerful forms than human to take. And I believe that this is where the idea of the “afterlife” comes in. For once you are done with Earth, there are many other levels to move to, just like a worm becomes a butterfly and takes to the skies in a new life.

Just as you were once a lower form of life, you are destined to become a higher form of life. And the material world is like a school, or maybe even a work-release prison. Karma is your grade, and how well you do is what determines whether or not you graduate, or are released. The idea that the material, external world is more real than the internal world of the spirit, to me, is laughable. We are all playing Satan’s game, Satan, AKA Samael, God’s wisest Angel, the Tester of Souls. The weigher of hearts against a feather.

And out of respect for Satan, and the very idea of paying the Devil his due, I respect physics, science, chemistry, biology, and all the other deterministic systems in which I find myself temporary entangled, mostly due to the intricacy of their design and the fun that can be had playing this game. Satan made the physical universe, and is the master of everything material. But God’s invention is far superior: the Spirit. My faith in God is what makes me see the value in basic morality, so that my Spirit will not karmically be weighed down to this physical plane forever. Because there are higher levels of consciousness to be achieved, and we will all get there eventually.

Though every person is a universe unto themselves, being incarnate in the physical realm breaks our solipsism by exposing us to the problem of other minds, which is why we have to be on our best behavior in our interactions with others, in order to avoid bad karma and keep a clean conscience. How interpersonal conflicts of agenda are resolved is what defines a society. This is where politics come into play, as well as economics, and we must carefully scrutinize our social infrastructure in order to route out systemic injustice and promote harmonic human interaction. Unifying the world both in spite of and in celebration of cultural differences is obviously key to this goal.

But ultimately, because I believe that God is an anarchist, a facilitator and not a ruler, I believe that the point of life and consciousness is to eventually become Gods in our own right, and foster the evolution of beings less spiritually evolved than ourselves. We are all moving towards a higher level of consciousness, and that will entail more autonomy and ability to create our own life, and our own theatres upon which it will perform.

Spirituality and great works are the path to true freedom, whereas atheistic, nihilistic, scientific determinism is a prison of ignorance in which we confine ourselves. To believe otherwise is to believe that humans are merely biological machines, with no meaning or purpose in life but to work, consume, and reproduce. When in reality, there are contributions to make: art, music, literature, and applied science. Cures to disease and the solutions to environmental problems. New technology to make life safer and more enjoyable.

I hope my faith and reason coexisting prove that it is possible to retain old school spiritual values while still being progressive politically and a futurist and transhumanist technologically and scientifically.

Sometimes I wonder if it were even possible for God to express itself fully through a single human being, which leads me to reject the idea of God as anything other than the totality of all things. Personally, I believe that Jesus has reincarnated several times and each one of his incarnations has served to fulfill a part of his agenda. There is also the possibility that Jesus split himself into several souls and they are all here at once. But I don’t see how the omnipotent rapture-Jesus foretold by Revelations is possible.

If Jesus came down from heaven in all of his glory, he wouldn’t be able to define himself as human, because if he tried, everyone would be pissed off at him.

If he came back as a man, the women would be pissed.

If he came back as a white man, the blacks would be pissed.

If he came back beautiful, the ugly people would be pissed.

If he came back heterosexual, the gays would be pissed.

If he came back as an anarchist, the government would be pissed and probably do something stupid like nail him to another tree.

If he came back as a fascist, everyone would be pissed.

If he came back as a new-age hippie guru, the church would be pissed.

If he came back as a Democrat, the Republicans would be pissed.

There is no circumstance in which he could come back that wouldn’t piss someone off, possibly starting a war. Jesus himself, probably the most peaceful person ever, has been the motivation behind plenty of wars, from the Crusades to the Inquisition, and on into the modern age.

Like old Abraham Lincoln said, “You can please some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.” This world is so divided, how could one person of one nationality, race, sex, and creed ever hope to lead it?

Jesus wants to please everyone. That’s why he generally tends to stay off this lousy rock. Its impossible to please anyone here because you are all bigots with your own idea of what is right and what is wrong. If Jesus tried to come back to this planet at the state its in now, he would inevitably piss a lot of people off, because he wouldn’t be anything they expected or were hoping for.

The fact of the matter is, it is logically impossible for Jesus to please everyone because everyone has conflicting agendas. How is it possible for someone who has to be everything to everyone to have his own identity? And indeed, the first time he came, he most certainly did not please anyone and in fact created a lot of conflict and pissed a lot of important people off by revealing everyone’s petty scams and trifling cons to the world, even at the highest levels of ‘society’. And ultimately everyone became so heavily invested in lies that they felt like they had to get rid of the one guy who was faithful to the truth.

People of the earth don’t like peace. They like war. They don’t like charity. They like mindless self-indulgence. How are you going to attract a soul of peace and charity when you are all a bunch of greedy assholes? Why would Jesus ever want to come back? On a planet this greedy, he would probably attract more haters than Obama, Justin Beiber, and Octo-mom combined.

And think of how Jesus would be exploited in the modern age. Companies would want endorsements. Someone would try to get him to do a porno. The military might try to turn him into a weapon. The Feds would try to use him as a spy. The mafia would set up a gambling racket around his behavior. Every country on Earth would want him to claim allegiance to their nation. Every loser on the planet would feel like he owed them something because of a bunch of false promises made by writers who never even met the man.

It’s like that scene in RoboCop 2 where the corporation that owned RoboCop was trying to re-program his brain to make him ‘better’, but ultimately corporate committee thinking just created a logically indecipherable chunk of code that wouldn’t compile!

So, in the end, if Jesus ever came back, I think he would probably reject Government, Religion, Big Business, and Society and just move into a shack in the woods and play guitar or something. I can’t claim to know the mind of God, but I know good people because I am one. From my point of view, what humans call ‘society’ is, in actuality, just a bunch of selfish people manipulating each other, and really, I don’t want any part of it. And I’m pretty sure that Jesus, Lao Tzu, and a lot of other holy wise men would probably agree.

Well it was Easter this weekend. I totally forgot about this until Sunday, when I went to do my grocery shopping for the week at my small town grocery store. I thought it was odd that the parking lot was totally empty and the lights were off. Then I noticed a sign on the front door that said: “Closed. Happy Easter.”

Happy Easter… unless you can’t get any any FOOD! WTF?

OK, first let me preface this rant by saying that I am a great admirer of Jesus Christ. I think he was a great guy, I have a lot of respect for his personal philosophy, and I seek to emulate his behavior in my own life.

However, even though Christ himself was awesome, the religion that mankind has built around his legacy is complete and utter garbage. This is so apparent in the holiday that Christians call Easter. I mean, the whole thing is just a slap in the face to everything Jesus stood for. They took his assassination and made it a fucking holiday, what a bad, tasteless joke. And the whole thing is CRUX to Christians, because this is the event that gets them off the hook for all their own sins, evil, and lies.

Once, a Christian asked me if I feared the “coming judgment” of Christ. I said no, because I am innocent. To which the Christian responded: “No one is innocent until they have been washed clean by the blood of Christ.”

So let me get this straight here: You bathe in the blood of your God’s dead son, and you think that this somehow makes you clean? That is some fucked up, twisted shit! I know Satanists whose ideas are a lot less perverted than that! But that is the way a lot of Christian people think. The crux of their philosophy is, basically: “Some guy died 2,000 years ago so that I can be an asshole today.” Here’s an idea: instead of performing these empty rituals in order to convince yourself that you are forgiven for your sins, why not try to actually BE A GOOD PERSON? In other words, WWJD?

I mean seriously, to take a good person like Jesus and basically make him responsible for all the world’s sin and lies is just sick. The whole thing is just a huge cop out for the bad behavior of humanity. I mean, how the Hell does it logically follow that Jesus’s execution absolves humanity of its sins? I mean, God’s son comes to visit Earth, the locals pop him off, and that somehow gets them OUT of trouble? If anything, I would think it would be the other way around! This “Jesus died for you” shit sounds to me like an excuse that was concocted by Jesus’s murderers. 1800 years ago, the Roman government handed down the proclamation:

“Jesus died for you.”

Don’t you mean that YOU KILLED JESUS FOR ME?

“No,” they say, “That had to happen. Wasn’t our choice.”

Bullshit. Jesus didn’t die for me, he lived for me, until a bunch of assholes had him killed. Don’t try to paint over the truth with his blood. The Bible is the Warren Report of the Roman Empire: Its the story of Jesus Christ as told by the same government that had him whacked.

And when they compiled the bible 200 years later, they took all the texts written about Jesus that supported their world view and made them canonical. Then they took all the texts that were incendiary, or revolutionary, or inconvenient to Roman rule, anything that would have opened peoples’ minds and made them harder to control, they took all that shit and burned it. And anyone that tried to keep copies of those documents for preservation, they executed. How Christian.

And what does the Christian bible imply about God? I’d say it implies that he was a pretty ineffective ruler. Have you ever read the Old Testament? Is it just me, or does God kind of come off as an asshole in that thing? He was always smiting people and handing down these ridiculous and impossible-to-follow rules… What a dick!

“Don’t have sex with more than one person at a time, don’t steal, don’t kill,” says God.

“But God,” you say, “Why did you give me a mind and body that wants to fuck everything that moves? Why did you put so much wealth in the hands of psychotic assholes who by their insensitive actions beg to be killed and robbed?”

“I didn’t do that,” says God, “Satan did.”

“Well who created Satan, asshole?”

Seriously, if Satan really does exist, I feel sorry for him. It seems to me as though he was a scapegoat for all of God’s mistakes. But then God had a son, and now Jesus fills the role of scapegoat. So basically, God gave Jesus Satan’s crappy job.

I would say that the Bible implies that God was a pretty shitty parent.

“Hey, Son, its about time you started to pick up your end of the family business. You see, I created this guy named Satan a while back. He got a little out of control and now things are all screwed up. Would you please kill him for me? Oh yeah, and I also created all these humans on a planet called Earth. Satan got up in there and corrupted them, and now the place is a total mess. Would you please go down there and clean all that shit up?”

Basically, I think that Christianity implies that children only exist to serve their parents. No wonder Christians are such shitty parents: look at the example they have to go by! They worship a God who killed his only son as some kind of sacrifice so that the world’s population can continue its orgy of killing, greed, and sin. What does Christianity imply about parenting? “Have a bunch of kids and put them to work on your farm.” What a bunch of self indulgent bullshit. This is what people mean when they say that Christians are “socially backwards”. They believe that youth exists to serve age, when really it should be the other way around.

Look at the holiday of Lent. You’re supposed to fast, and then Easter comes along and you can eat again! Why? Because after a short period of self-denial in tribute to him, Jesus is finally dead now, and we can all go back to being assholes again! Yay! The bosses’ kid is gone! Lets throw a party on the company dime!

The whole thing is just disgusting and hypocritical, and I… just can’t take it any more.

Sometimes, people tell me I should feel grateful to live in a country where we are free to worship God in any way we choose. These statements always burn me from the inside out, like acid in my veins.

People mistake their personal situation for the general situation. They think that, because they are free, the entire country is free. The truth is, if you are a white Christian of a recognized denomination, you ARE free to practice your religion in America. But if you choose a different faith, there’s a gun butt to your jaw and a dank, dirty jail cell waiting for you.

In Rastafari culture, there is a very important religious ceremony known as a ‘Reasoning’. A reasoning is a simple event where the Rastas gather; smoke ganja; and discuss ethical, social and religious issues. Many people do this in America as well, without even realizing it is a sacred religious ritual. Unfortunately, reasoning is illegal in America.

There exists in America a similar custom which is tolerated by the law. It’s called ‘Holy Communion’. A Holy Communion is a simple event where the Christians gather, drink alcohol, and discuss ethical, social, and religious issues. Sound familiar?

My question is: What is the difference between the Communion and the Reasoning? If your mind is free of prejudice, there is no difference. But the bigots that comprise the ‘powers that be’ will always try to ‘teach’ you by installing their prejudice in your mind.

They say that cannabis is an evil plant that has no spiritual value, but my life experience says otherwise. These old eyes have personally witnessed the mystical effects of cannabis on the hearts and minds of my fellow humanity. I have seen ganja impart empathy and conscience to those who previously had none. Cannabis has transformed simpletons and petty materialists into theologians with complex philosophical ideas. Ganja has awakened the spirit of individualism and free thinking in those who were previously hard-coded robots. It has broadened the perspectives of many, and turned those who partook into better people than they were before they tried it.

Do you ever wonder why hippies care about the environment? Its because they have been reminded of their responsibility to it through the smoking of the sacred herb. Some people don’t smoke cannabis, and instead prefer alcohol. These tend to be the ones who care nothing of the fate of humanity. They are cut off and numb to the world, and spiritually dead inside.

Not to bag on alcohol too much, we all need a drink now and then, but I’m tired of this commonly propagated lie that alcohol is harmless and cannabis has no value. They say that cannabis is a petty escape from reality. That may be true of alcohol, but not of the sacred herb. Cannabis is a mild psychedelic. It is not an escape from reality, and anyone who uses it with that intention will be sorely disappointed. Cannabis amplifies reality. And if you have any skeletons in your closet, cannabis will shove them right in your face. That is why the evil ones cannot partake in it.

There is a saying amongst potheads: “Man made beer, and God made pot. God is perfect, man is not.”

But whatever your opinions of cannabis and alcohol are, there is one argument you must consider: The first amendment to the Constitution says that the government cannot prohibit anyone from the free exercise of their religion. Considering the fact that many religions view cannabis as a sacrament (including certain sects of Christianity), shouldn’t this make anti-pot laws unconstitutional?

Why should some denominations of Christianity be able to get together on Sunday, drink alcohol, say that it is a sacrament that helps them commune with the Holy Spirit, and that’s fine with the law. But if a Gnostic or Rastafarian church wants to do the same thing with pot, its a crime? Is this not a clear cut case of religious discrimination, and a government that prohibits the free exercise of one religion while legally respecting another?

Sadly, the pro-cannabis religions are a tiny minority, and their rights are swept under the rug. The problem is, anyone who isn’t directly effected by prohibition could really give a rat’s ass about someone else’s rights. People who aren’t effected by an unjust law are not going to fight it on general principle. Johnny Wasp, as he sips his wine after church, doesn’t care at all that the government violates the civil liberties of Rastafarians by locking them up for pot. It doesn’t effect him.

And our Supreme Court, composed of Justices who are supposedly our wise and uncorruptable social and intellectual betters, doesn’t give a rat’s ass either. They are so Eurocentric that they cannot even comprehend why cannabis could be considered a religious sacrament. And they are further motivated by psychological evidence that suggests pot users are more sympathetic to certain political causes. Political causes that the Justice’s wealthy constituents view as a threat (ie- socialism). Once again, capitalism trumps religion in America.

We live in a country where selfishness is our only principal. With that weak of a foundation, of course minority rights will be trampled by the ensconced majority culture. If it were THEIR church being raided with SWAT teams and THEIR holy sacrament confiscated, there would be a countrywide revolution the next day. But they could give a fuck if it happens to their neighbor, whose unconventional beliefs seem weird, scary, and mockable.

The truth is, the persecution of cannabis users is just a small part of a much bigger plot to completely eliminate certain trains of thought from the minds of humanity. This coincides with the systematic genocide of the world’s indigenous cultures. Religions have existed for millenia that consider certain plants sacred and holy. Then, the white man stole their land and made their culture against the law.

But the genocide of the Native American and other indigenous races isn’t enough for the American Government. They also feel the need to completely eliminate indigenous cultures from American society. They won’t be satisfied until the last member of these races is dead, and all records of their culture’s existence is destroyed. They do not want these cultures’ ideas to ‘pollute’ our minds and jeopardize the control that our leaders have over us.

The last thing the ‘powers that be’ want is for members of their own race to convert to these alien ways of thinking. Thus, they do not recognize the rights of white people to partake in the cultures of other races. This runs contrary to our country’s professed ideals of many races and cultures coexisting harmoniously.

We live in a multicultural melting pot society, which means that different people living beside eachother will eventually adopt eachother’s customs. Although I am white, I am not strictly the product of white society. MTV and the public school system raised me, just as much as my parents did.

I see American society as a kind of cultural buffet. As an American citizen, I feel entitled to pick and choose which cultural customs to adopt personally. Thus, its unfair for the government or anyone else to say that I am not a Rasta, just because I am white. To me, a person who decides to follow a particular religion is a legitimate practitioner of said religion, regardless of race or cultural heritage. If a fat, rich white kid from New Jersey truly believes in Rasta ideals, then he IS a Rasta.

Sadly, the religious organizations controlled by indigenous races are so scarred by the white man’s transgressions, they tend to distrust us. This is exemplified by my quest to consume and understand the mystical and hallucinogenic catcus known as Peyote.

I tried everywhere to get this stuff. No one cold get it. Not hippies, not gangstas, not even the Mafia! Finally, I came to the conclusion that the only person who could hook me up was a real bonafide Native American.

So I went to their churches, and got the door slammed in my face many times. I asked Native Americans that I knew in every day life to let me in, and they angrily spurned my attempts.

Eventually, I got close enough to one of these guys to get him to really talk to me about it. But he was still reluctant to take me to his tribe’s peyote ceremony. When I asked him why, he would always respond:

“Its ours. Its not for your kind.”

But he knew that I was sensitive to the Native Americans’ plight, and he knew I understood that their race was dying. And so I said to him:

“If you don’t share your culture with me, then it dies with you.”

Understanding that all I wanted was to understand, he let me into the inner circle. Realizing that I was truly with them in Spirit, my friend and his tribe allowed me to partake. And I learned much wisdom that I will never forget, and carry with me into the world at large.

By converting followers of different races, the Native Americans can ensure that their culture lives on, even if their race dies out. One of the great things about culture is that it outlives the people who create it. Unfortunately, Rastafarians can be victim to this same paranoia about white people, but I have won their trust as well in times past.

The knowledge that curiosity about other peoples’ ways of thinking has given me has transformed me into a much better person than I used to be. And I credit both that and my complex understanding of theology to the consumption of entheogenic substances. So you’re never going to convince me that these chemicals don’t have spiritual value.

Instead, I will know that I am oppressed, and that Freedom of Religion in this country is a lie and a sham. It is yet another benefit of conformity that belongs to everyone else but me and the people I care about. I will know that I am a slave to a system which does not just try to control my body, but my mind and soul as well. I will know that not only my behavior, but my very way of thinking is being controlled by a crooked organization that is trying to fuck me and everyone else. And I will know that this is bullshit.

And whenever someone congratulates me on living in the Land of the Free where everything is gorgeous and rosy, I will always feel a mixture of both sadness and anger in my heart.